Device for routing light among a set of optical waveguides

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9703050-B2
Application number	US-201314142699-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 27, 2013
Priority date	Dec 27, 2013
Publication date	Jul 11, 2017
Grant date	Jul 11, 2017

Abstract

Light streams are routed. A transparent plate can be provided in which at least 2 waveguides converge on an active region, wherein the active region comprises a switching element, which can be utilized to extract a portion of the light stream or combine two or more wavelength portions for form a subsequent light stream. Cladding material constrains a light stream to a waveguide. Ion bombardment can be utilized to form micropores in the cladding material, and subsequent etching can enlarge the micropores to form larger diameter pores (of nanometer scale) in the switching element. The pores can be filled with liquid crystal, which can be in a passive state with a first refractive (RI) index, and a second active state (electrical voltage applied) with a second RI. By adjusting the RI. the light stream can be diverted by operations of refraction, diffraction, reflection, etc.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system, comprising:
a first waveguide that comprises an optically transparent material having first refractive index (RI);
a second waveguide that comprises the optically transparent material;
a switching element between the first waveguide and the second waveguide, wherein the switching element comprises the optically transparent material and comprises a plurality of pores filled with liquid crystal material, and wherein the liquid crystal material ha…

Assignees

• Univ City Hong Kong

Inventors

• Chan Hau Ping
• Tsvetkov Valentine A
• Ho Wing Fat

Classifications

• G02B6/3596 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G02B6/3546

  Physics · mapped topic

• G02B6/136

  Physics · mapped topic

• G02B2006/12107

  Physics · mapped topic

• G02B6/3594

  Physics · mapped topic